originated by chance, it could never have been kept from mingling and losing itself in the corrupting masses of a dark world.

Nor is this the whole of the vast subtraction. With the Bible, we have stricken from existence every thing else that has ever grown, directly or indirectly, from the Bible. We have not merely taken down-we have precluded from existence, the whole of that great and beautiful frame-work of means and measures, which, under the prompting and auspices of the Bible, has been reared for the moral amelioration and even the physical improvement of our race. To see a little of what this item in the subtraction includes, we have taken from all the countless libraries on earth, and from all the other books under heaven, every trace and every influence of Bible literature; every turn of holy thought, every shade of religious and even of moral sentiment, every coloring of beautiful and heavenly truth which the Bible has ever spread on the page of letters; and we have left neither Christian author nor trace of

his system beneath the sun. We have taken away even all

the controversial writings, which, although, for a while, they excited personal enmity and party hostility, were yet so power. ful in clearing from the moral and religious atmosphere those mists of error and those clouds of falsehood which had come over the Christian world from the border-lands of heathenism. We have left no infiltration, however slight or secret, of Christian thought, feeling, or principle any where in all the veins, pores, or tissues of the whole body of human writings. and works of art-whether of history or of biography, of philosophy or of science, of law or of ethics, of poetry or of eloquence, of music or of painting, of sculpture or of architecture. We have taken away all Christian family religion, and all the sacred counsels and all the holy prayers which the Bible has ever prompted in the hearts of Christian fathers and of Christian mothers, and which has been so copiously poured on the infant hearts and the opening minds of so many millions of our race. We have taken away all the influence which the Bible has ever had on systems of education, on schools and teachers; and all that it has ever done for our wondrously

complex system of benevolent means for the welfare of the bodies and for the salvation of the souls of men; and all that it has ever done for our truly noble system of civil liberty and free toleration in government and in religion, for the influence of the Bible here has been immeasurable. Absolute monarchy and crushing despotism are, more or less remotely, the growth of ancient heathenism; while generous civil liberty and true religious freedom are connatural with that spirit of kindness and justice, peace and love, which the Bible breathes.

But we have taken all, all away, and what have we left? We have stricken a sun from the moral firmament, and have put out all the brightest lights besides-those planets in the spiritual heavens which gathered and reflected their glory from it; and we have left but a few faint stars and wandering comets, which beguile or startle, but do little or nothing to guide and give safety to a race around whom has set in a night of ancient clouds and storms!

And now the question which we have to ask is this, In such a night, what could mere human reason do towards unveiling the future and settling our relations to spiritual being? In that night, nothing would be known of what the Bible tells us of God, of His glorious perfections, and of His wonderful works. Nothing would be known of a future life, of a resurrection, or of a judgment. Nothing would be known of a Saviour, or of a Sanctifier; of a way of pardon to the sinner, or of the means of sanctification from sin. All, so far as these and kindred things are concerned, would be the night, the blank of uninformed, unenlightened nature. What, in such a state, could more human reason do towards giving us right views of God, of religious truth, and of man's future destiny? These things are not like the truths of science. They can not be demonstrated with diagrams, in theorems, and problems; nor settled in the laboratory by analysis and experiment; nor ascertained by observation through an induction of particulars. Without a revelation, not one of them could be carried further than to doubtful conjecture or to bare probability. Nor could even conjecture or probability ever reach more than a few of them, and even those few only in their simplest elements. Al

most every thing concerning God, our own origin, our spiritual nature, our relations to spiritual beings, and our future destiny would remain wholly undiscovered. Nothing concerning them could ever be known. Upon a few things reason would doubtless speculate and hazard its opinions. It would probably conclude, with some confidence, that there is what might be called a God, and, with something like a dubious conjecture, that the soul is immortal. It would probably infer that the Being, whom it called God, is powerful; and, possibly, that He is intelligent and benevolent. It might conjecture that He is pleased with some instances of virtue in men; and it might dream and embody its dreams in fable that, in some unseen world, there will be a sort of shadowy distinction between the good and the evil.

And yet, even upon these simple elements of religion, it would still leave deep shades of doubt. Not one of them could it bring into the clear light of certainty. Upon most of them reason could do no more than adopt the language of the great Roman orator, when speculating "about the immortality of the soul" "While I read, I assent; but when I lay down my book, and begin to think with myself, my assent is all gone.". In relation to all that is most important in the details of religious truth, reason would be utterly in the dark. Whether God be body or spirit, confined to place, or clothed with ubiquity, limited in knowledge or knowing all things, whether He take no note of human actions, or move every where in the inspections of a particular Providence, whether He is a being of beginning and end, or from everlasting to everlasting; whether He is mutable in His purposes, or unchangeably the same; whether He be true, or reckless of truth; immaculate, or spotted with impurity; just, or winking at unrighteousness; on these points reason alone could never throw one ray of certainly informing light. Then, again, whether the soul be material or immaterial; whether it need purification, or may be happy in impurity; by what kind of worship and service it could please God; how it could insure the pardon of its sins; by what rule its duty here and its destiny hereafter are to be fixed; how it can give certainty to its hopes or its longings for future happiness; and

how it may infallibly escape those direful woes which conscience, even in the dark night of nature, is ever throwing up in threatening shapes and gloomy colors before the mind; on these and many other points mere human reason could cast nothing but darkness impenetrable and confusion inextricable. It would have no data from which to start; it could therefore reach no certain result. It would have no light in its hand; it must therefore grope in darkness.

When we come to measure the sufficiency of reason without a revelation for the discovery of religious truth, and for the safe guidance of the soul through the awful peradventures of the unknown, we are in constant danger of too much influence from the light of the system under which we live. It is hardly possible to make sufficient allowance for the strength and accuracy which, on all moral and religious subjects, reason has derived from the Bible. We feel that, in moral disquisition, reason is not only quick and strong, but, in a high sense, discerning and accurate. We see that, even on religious ground, she carries herself with no little of the air of confidence and assurance; and hence we are too ready to conclude that she would hold the same port and tread with the same steadiness under all circumstances; but we are mistaken. Had the Bible never existed, and had the world never known any thing of what has actually grown up under the influence of the Bible, reason might indeed have been bold and confident; but it is certain, that on the field of religious truth, she would have been wandering and wild, an indiscriminating and inaccurate power.

In order, therefore, to judge of the necessity of a revelation, we must, as we have attempted to do, take away, annihilate the Bible and all that has ever sprung from it, directly or indirectly; if the conception be practicable, we must leave man as he would then be, in this world of wonders, himself the deepest, most perplexing wonder of the whole, a benighted being, knowing nothing of either his origin or his destiny; astonished and confounded at numberless dark and inexplicable mysteries, and pained to misery by ten thousand inquiries which he could never answer.

Under such circumstances and with his present nature, he would certainly reason, and as certainly reason in the dark. Theory on theory would be multiplied in attempting to account for the origin of things, and in conjecturing the probable or the possible destiny of man. But, as all this would be without one ray of certainly informing light, the inevitable consequence would be that error on error would abound. Dark labyrinthian mistakes would entangle wildly or weakly philosophizing man. Reason itself, accustomed to mere guess-work and to argument without premises, would grow feeble and at last become perverted. Prodigies in nature would awaken fear and drive apprehension into terror. Superstition, with her night of dreams and horrors, would commence her reign. Man's notions of God would grow more and more grotesque. Men, preeminent for brute strength, perhaps for brute passions, would gain the homage of the grovelling multitude and mount to an apotheosis. The process of deterioration would advance by rapid strides, till at last man would fashion God into the likeness of His creatures, and bow down in absurd prostration to the work of human hands; abomination and uncleanness would fill the earth, and to all practical effect the human race would live "without hope and without God in the world."

Modern skeptical philosophy boasts of the sufficiency of reason to find out God, to mark out duty, and to point out destiny, by no other light than that which shines in the works of nature, particularly in the teachings of intuition, consciousness, and conscience-by no other light than that of the outer and the inner world, as a universal and all-sufficing revelation of God to man. But philosophers of this school forget or ignore the fact that this reason, as employed in their service, has feloniously snatched its torch-light from the Bible, and is thus exhibiting and boasting as its own a purloined light. There is not one of these boasters of the sufficiency of reason, through the light of nature, to do the work of revelation, who has not either received a Christian education, or in some other way opened his mind to the teachings, the light of the Bible. If in no other way, this light has at least shone upon his mind while searching that book for objections against its doctrines, and for